Seagate shares soaring

A picture, they say, is worth a thousand words. Here is that image.

So far this year Seagate shares have gained 148%, and Western Digital shares have gained 156%. Source: Google Finance.

These two graphs show the evolution of Seagate and Western Digital shares so far this year. The first has grown 148.38% on the stock market in the last ten and a half months. The second, a little more: 156.09%.

Both companies are the major players in the field of traditional hard drives. They divide the market equally (approximately 40% share each) along with Toshiba (approximately 20%), but that market seemed to have been relegated to the background, correct?

Incorrect.

A second youth for the traditional hard drive

It is true that SSD units are the clear protagonists due to their performance and the fact that their prices have not stopped falling in recent years, but hard drives continue to be the absolute champions of capacity. AND that matters a lot (a lot) in the world of AI.

The reason is obvious: AI data centers make use of thousands of advanced GPUs both for model training and inference, but everything we say to ChatGPT, Gemini or Claude is stored, and we also have to save the images, videos or documents that we upload to interact with those AI models. There are terabytes and terabytes of content who need an efficient and economical storage medium.

And that’s where hard drives come in. If you want to store a lot of data, these drives are the clear choice. Both Seagate, Western Digital and Toshiba continue to offer continuous advances to bring together more and more data on their drives. In recent months we have seen hard drives that, thanks to HAMR technology, reach an amazing 36 TB. The price, which is around 700 euros, is almost ridiculous considering that capacity: less than 20 euros per TB.

There is nothing even remotely similar in the world of SSD units: there it is normal to find 8 TB units at most, although it is true that some companies prepare mammoth 256 TB units that have not reached the market and will probably have exorbitant prices.

That has caused the demand for traditional hard drives to skyrocket again when it seemed that this technology could go out of fashion. This is exactly what these two firms have taken advantage of, as they are experiencing a surprising new golden age.

The gigantic investment in data centers benefits both companies, because they too will benefit from spectacular demand into storage units for those data centers. And if everything goes as it seems—and the theoretical bubble does not burst— the short-term future looks especially rosy for both companies.

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